My discovery of New York City based string quartet Brooklyn Rider occurred due to the awesomeness that is NPR and their Tiny Desk Concerts and actually marks the first time I'm talking about classical music on this blog. Equally comfortable playing Debussy, Haydn, and Cage; the string quartet also teams up with singer/songwriters, Turkish kamancheh players, and plays some of its own members' compositions. To call the band purely a classical group actually doesn't accurately describe the quartet or its goals. Brooklyn Rider is a unique blend of influences wishing to stretch across a wide terrain through the vehicle of the string quartet. Instead of isolating itself in any one period of classical music or any school of musical thought, the quartet uses its four talented members to weave together these musical tapestries that can best be described as genre-bending. Not in the sense that artists like David Garrett or Vanessa Mae or even the Turtle Island String Quartet bend genre but into this totally different, raw, organic thing. Their latest release Dominant Curve is inspired by Debussy and how he brought outside influences into classical music and joins together Debussy's own String Quartet in g minor with works by Brooklyn Rider violinist Colin Jacobsen, Kojiro Umezaki from Japan, Dmitri Yanov-Yanovski from Uzbekistan, and an electronic/acoustic arrangement of a John Cage work by Brooklyn based composer Justin Messina. The result is this product that is universally accessible both to classical music lovers and others.
Check out Brooklyn Rider with their NPR Tiny Desk Concert that won me over:
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